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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

The more you scratch Friedrich Jansson …

Author: Roberto Muehlenkamp

… the more the fellow loses his bearings and hysterically showers abuse on his opponent.

His latest foot-stomping, with the title Spoonfeeding the Mule, reads like Jansson is foaming at his mouth, at least the title and the introductory abuse, which is so characteristic of this lamentable individual that it will be quoted verbatim:

Roberto Muehlenkamp has again updated some posts in his futile attempt to refute my criticisms, and has again offered little but misinterpretation, incomprehension, and illiteracy. We all know what that means: it’s time for another round of spoonfeeding that dimwitted animal. As usual, I will simply ignore cases when Muehlenkamp has simply repeated himself without even acknowledging my previous refutation, and while pretending that I had not addressed an issue. (He may not be deliberately lying in these cases, as his reading comprehension is so poor that he doesn’t even notice concise rebuttals.)

Yes, Mr. Jansson, we all know what the above verbiage means.

It means another lame excuse for Jansson’s making a furious fuss about those of his opponent’s arguments he thinks he can make a furious fuss about, while ignoring those questions and arguments he’d rather avoid because he has no answers to the questions and no arguments to counter the arguments.

As to the "has simply repeated himself without even acknowledging my previous refutation, and while pretending that I had not addressed an issue" - claim, and the bragging that I didn’t notice his "concise rebuttals", to ignore the most abusive mouthfuls of garbage, it's rather obvious that this is just the mendacious rhetoric of a charlatan trying to impress an audience of gullible fools, which he is likely to find among his "Revisionist" coreligionists but nowhere else.

And as to "deliberately lying" (I didn’t know it was possible to lie unintentionally, by the way), it is worth remembering that the only one who has been caught arguing against better knowledge in our discussions is Jansson.

Jansson finally undertakes to reply to the following question regarding a passage from Feuchtwanger’s Der gelbe Fleck quoted by Jürgen Langowski:

As to Langowski’s article, I wasn’t referring to "a few passages from the book’s early pages in which violence is mentioned. In other words, there were individual cases in which Jews were killed", as dodging and subject-changing Jansson well knows. I was referring to a description of the precarious living conditions forced upon the Jewish population, the reduced birth rate and increase of suicides due to these conditions, which is followed by this indictment (my translation):

No, these are not excesses!
No, these are not 'riots'!
This is the coldly premeditated, cynically conceived assassination (Meuchelmord) of a defenseless minority, which is inseparably linked to the National Socialist system.

So, Mr. Jansson, what did the author of these lines mean to express, if not that, in his opinion, the Jewish minority in Germany was being assassinated by creating unbearable living conditions for Germany’s Jews, driving them to despair and thus causing them to commit suicide and/or no longer have children, and thereby to gradually become extinct?

Readers are encouraged to read Jansson’s lengthy answer, which is supposed to support his argument that that «as “Ausrottung” was held to be an appropriate term for events which had taken place in the 1930s, it cannot imply “radicalization” of Nazi policy (towards mass killing) because it was already used to describe Nazi policy before that radicalization allegedly took place.»

First of all, that argument is a non-sequitur, for the use of "Ausrottung" as meaning something other than physical extermination at a certain time would not preclude its use in the sense of physical extermination at a later time.

Second, far from demonstrating that the term "Ausrottung" doesn't imply mass killing when used in a literal sense as describing something done to a population or group of people, the most Jansson manages to show is that, like other terms designating extreme physical violence when used literally, "Ausrottung" can be used in a non-literal, figurative sense, as a hyperbole or a rhetorical figure of speech – just like the term "crucification", regarding which Jansson provides the following pearl, quoted verbatim for what it would reveal (if that were not obvious already) about where Jansson comes from:

Coming now to the specific passage (quoted by Muehlenkamp, taken from Langowski) that refers to an “assassination” of Jewish minority, one should first observe that such rhetorical excess is found throughout the chapter, for example in the reference to the “Golgothaweg” that the Jews are said to have walked. Evidently this did not mean that they had all been literally crucified – it’s just another example of Jews making opportunistic usage of a Christian language with themselves in the place of Jesus, for the purpose of the emotional manipulation of a Christian audience.

Bingo, Mr. Jansson! I’m not referring to the anti-Semitic musings at the end of the above-quoted paragraph, but to the argument that references to crucifixion don’t mean the Jews had been literally crucified. Just like "extermination", "assassination", "slaughtering", "wiping out" and other expressions designating destructive physical violence, the term "crucifixion" can be used in a non-literal, figurative sense, like in Tori Amos’ Crucify.

Neither does the use of figurative expressions like "you’re killing me" change the literal meaning of the term "killing".

And if the term "Ausrottung", like "assassination" was used in Der Gelbe Fleck in a figurative, hyperbolic sense, that does not in any way change the literal meaning of "Ausrottung" when used to describe something done to a population or group of people.

Jansson spends another paragraph on my assumption (based on Langowski’s referring to "die Autoren") that Der Gelbe Fleck was the work of several authors. Said assumption may be wrong, but that’s a minor issue in this context. The point is that, if whoever wrote Der Gelbe Fleck made a figurative, hyperbolic use of terms designating extreme destructive violence when used literally, such figurative, hyperbolic use in no way affects the literal meaning of these terms when describing something done to a human being or to a group or population of such beings.

Having failed to make his point on the literal meaning of "Ausrottung" and its verbal forms, Jansson again (after the "little men and little women" quote discussed here) provides examples of "extermination" being used in a non-literal, figurative sense – as if that meant anything other than what I just said and changed the fact that "Ausrottung" or "extermination", when used in a literal sense to designate something done to a group or population of human beings, means nothing other than killing (in a literal sense) all or a substantial part of the members of that group.

Jansson concludes that

The complete normalcy of such linguistic usage refutes the argument that “exterminatory language” (like Vernichtung and Ausrottung) proves or offers decisive evidence for actual extermination (in the sense of across the-board killing).

Whether "exterminatory language" is evidence for exterminatory intent or action depends on the occasion and the context, on whether one is speaking literally or figuratively, and on whether one is indulging in rhetorical bluster or being dead serious about what one is saying. One can announce that one will break all of someone else’s teeth without actually meaning to do so, or one can make the same announcement and mean every damn word of it. The issue of occasion and context brings us back to the questions that Jansson continues running away from. Here they are again:

Jansson lamely contends that the supposition that killing is meant in all of my examples is wrong. He has to, for acknowledging otherwise regarding the last two of these examples would mean that he can either squeal "forgery" or pack up, close down his blog page and dedicate himself to gardening or some other hobby more fruitful than disputing facts contrary to his ideological beliefs. I would ask Jansson to be more specific here. Which of the examples I provided does he think do not mean or imply killing people, and how does he justify his understanding in regard to each of these examples? Let's hear, Mr. Jansson.

Now, assuming that Langowski’s reading is mistaken and Feuchtwanger’s book did not mean to convey the impression that the Jews of Germany were being exterminated or "assassinated", would this mean that Fegelein, Frank and Himmler, in the examples cited in this blog, had anything other than physical killing in mind when they spoke of "Ausrottung"? Please do tell us, Mr. Jansson.

So, Mr. Jansson, how does one ausrotten a group of people without killing them all or at least a substantial part of them? One might think of sterilizing a population to keep it from procreating, and thus causing it to gradually disappear. This gets us back to my examples.

Is this non-homicidal variety of ausrotten supposed to have been what SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein had in mind when, in his order of 28.09.1941, he instructed his troops to create Jewish quarters or ghettos where the local Jewish population could not be immediately ausgerottet?

Or what General Governor Hans Frank had in mind when, on 9 June 1944, he stated that the "natural fertility" required to assure Jewry’s continuity had been destroyed by the Ausrottung of the Jews in Poland, as these were the only ones who "had children"?

Or what Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler had in mind when he told his Posen audience, on 6 October 1943, that he had not considered himself entitled to ausrotten the Jewish males, "that is, to kill them or to have them killed", and let the children grow up "as avengers against our sons and grandsons", for which reason the difficult decision had been taken "to make this people disappear from the earth"?

Let’s hear, Mr. Jansson.

Jansson’s last remark in this section contains no argument, but it will be quoted verbatim for what it further reveals about Jansson’s mind and character (or absence of the latter):

Finally, Muehlenkamp again complains that I did not quote chapter and verse for my allusion to the fact that the Luther bible used “ausrotten” non-homicidally, despite the fact that the text is online and searchable, so that he could find the passage with a little use of CTRL+F. He states that “this suggests that the Luther bible doesn’t support Jansson’s claim”. No fear, oh illiterate one: the passage does indeed support my position, and you’ll get a reference soon enough – when it’s convenient for me.

Not that it matters, but why is Luther’s non-homicidal (and, hopefully for Jansson, also non-literal) use of "ausrotten" not convenient for Jansson at this moment, in the context of a discussion about the meaning of "ausrotten"? Never mind …

Opening his big mouth as wide as ever and calling his opponent dumb, Jansson insists that this statement in Ettling’s article:

Thus, it is evident that the bodies found in the car in Idaho could have been consumed by their own fire without someone else adding fuel.

is not made with reference to Ettling’s carcass-burning experiments, especially the one in which a 170-pound ewe was largely destroyed in a fire fed by its own fat, after a fire fed by external flammables had failed to destroy the carcass.

Not that it would matter much if Ettling had (rather unscientifically) made this statement without being supported by his experiments, as the interesting part of the article is Ettling’s observation/conclusion that the mentioned ewe carcass was largely destroyed in a fire fed by its own fat, and the parallel that this observation/conclusion incidentally brought to the investigator’s mind.

But is Jansson right in that there is no connection between the experiments and Ettling’s above- quoted statement?

Jansson produces the following, well, let’s call it arguments:

As the first two paragraphs of the paper make clear, Ettling was investigating the question “If a body in a car fire is burned so thoroughly as to be difficult to identify, does this prove that extra fuel (beyond that contained in the car itself) was added to the fire?”. He answered this question in the negative: it is possible, under favorable conditions, for an ordinary car fire to burn a body beyond recognition. Ettling was NOT investigating the burning of bodies without any external fuel at all, and he was not investigating complete cremation, but merely burning to the point that identifying the corpse is difficult or impossible. Now, Ettling did read Steiner’s “Treblinka”, which he appears to have assumed to be a factual account, and therefore did refer to true self-cremation – but only in the form of reporting what Steiner claimed happened at Treblinka. This kind of statement cannot be used to support Muehlenkamp’s beliefs on Treblinka, as it is not something supported by Ettling’s experiments, and would amount to saying “I believe that true self-cremation (or something similar) was possible at Treblinka because Steiner said so.” As for the argument that Ettling believed that Steiner’s account was factual – so what? Who cares? The issue is what experimental results say, not the personal beliefs of some arson investigator. Insofar as we are dealing not with Steiner’s claims but with Ettling’s actual experimental results, “consumed” refers to the kind of burning beyond recognition seen in Kamiah case, and “without someone else adding fuel” means “without fuel beyond that which is normally contained in a car fire”. As I have already shown, however, an ordinary car fire already contains large amounts of fuel, far beyond what Muehlenkamp thinks necessary for cremation.

So we are asked to believe that Ettling spent much of a rather short scientific article, dedicated to reporting about the results of certain experiments and the implications that these results had on a possible forensic case, proclaiming "personal beliefs" about matters unrelated to said results and implications.

Just how stupid does Jansson expect his readers to be?

Let’s look again at the context of Ettling’s conclusion regarding the Idaho car fire (emphases added):

The findings showed that for a ewe, and presumably for a human also, the body can be rather thoroughly consumed by fire from its own fat. A necessary condition is that the body be suspended in such a way that it is over the fire which is fed from the body fat. Some related information was found in an article concerning a Nazi extermination camp and its trouble destroying the corpses (3). Burning gasoline on piles of corpses on the ground did not consume the corpses. Eventually an "expert" was brought in who arranged the bodies on a rack with the corpses that appeared to contain some fat being placed on the bottom of the pile. A good fire beneath the rack caused fat to drip down and burn. The corpses which were thus over the fire instead of on the ground were reduced to ashes.

Thus, it is evident that the bodies found in the car in Idaho could have been consumed by their own fire without someone else adding fuel.

However much Jansson kicks and screams, the "Thus" at the beginning of the last sentence clearly denotes a conclusion derived from the findings mentioned in the first sentence of the previous paragraph, which happened to remind Ettling of a certain parallel case he had read about.

Ettling had burned one carcass inside a car and found that the fire fed by external flammables had not done much damage to the carcass. Then he had burned another carcass inside another car and found that
a) the fire fed by external flammables had also not done much damage to that carcass, but
b) the carcass had nevertheless been destroyed in a fire fed by its own fat, due to the particular position in which it had been suspended over that fire.

From these experimental results he concluded the following, in regard to the Idaho car fire:
a) the car fire itself need not have significantly damaged the corpses of the couple in the car, like it had not significantly damaged the carcasses of the ewes in his experiments;
b) the corpses may nevertheless – like the 170 pound ewe in the second experiment – have been largely destroyed in a fire fed by their own fat;
c) therefore, the fact that the corpses had been burnt beyond recognition did not necessarily mean that someone had added fuel to the car fire, i.e. one couldn’t conclude on a criminal act from the fact that the corpses had been burnt beyond recognition.

Conclusion c) is clearly expressed in Ettling’s remarks following the last sentence of the above quote (emphasis added):

Also, it becomes possible that the entire incident was accidental. Nicol and Overley (4) showed that a cigarette could burn out a car by smoldering over a period of time. Such was possible in the Idaho case if the couple had fallen asleep with a lighted cigarette. A smoldering fire could have resulted which asphyxiated the couple. (This is not intended to be a conclusion on the Idaho case since numerous other factors are not considered in this report.)

So arsonist Ettling’s message was that one could not conclude, from the fact that the corpses were burned beyond recognition, that there had been any foul play involved, like someone adding gasoline to the car fire. This because the corpses, like the 170-pound ewe in his second experiment, might have been rather thoroughly consumed in a fire fed by their own fat, even if, as both carcass-burning experiments suggested, the car fire itself had not significantly damaged the corpses.

The investigator’s reasoning rendered above becomes so clearly apparent from the above-quoted passages that I would throw Jansson’s proverb back in his face if I didn’t know that his problem is intellectual dishonesty rather than mere stupidity.

In response to my amplification that my information about burial density, Muehlenkamp – without checking the source which I gave – speculates that the graves were not completely filled, so that the capping layer was thicker than reported (contrary to its measurement given in the chart which I reproduced). How do I know that they’re talking about the actual space taken up by the carcasses? Because I actually read the report, not just the table which I reproduced, and consequently I can understand what information the authors are giving. I really can’t be bothered to respond any further to Muehlenkamp’s inane speculation about how to interpret something which he has not read.

The report in question can be downloaded here, and the passages that Jansson presumably refers to are the following on page 16:

4.3 Estimation of size of burial pits.
The area and volume of burial pits for slaughtered animals were initially estimated from the data on animal weights and age distributions contained in Table 4.1, using the following assumptions:
• The bulk density of the animals is 0.9 g/cm³;
• The carcasses are placed randomly in the pit, with a packing factor of 1.4 (equivalent to 30% porosity), to arrive at typical burial volumes of about 0.6 m³ for cattle and between 0.04 and 0.05 m³ per sheep or pig.
However, practical experience at some of the mass burial sites suggests that in practice the volumes for sheep and cattle are greater than above and appropriately adjusted values are incorporated in Table 4.2, for herds of 100 cattle or 1000 sheep or pigs. The increase is attributed in part to carcass bloat, which effectively reduces the bulk density.

The assumed bulk density of 0.9 g/cm3 is quite interesting, if one considers that one cubic meter equals 1,000,000 cubic centimeters. So if 0.9 grams of carcass mass could theoretically fit into one cubic centimeter, then 900,000 grams or 900 kg could theoretically fit into one cubic meter.

Also of interest are the typical burial volumes:

- According to Table 4.2, whereby 100 cattle weigh 37.3 tons or 37,300 kg, one head of cattle weighs 373 kg. If one head of cattle typically occupies 0.6 m³, then the typical burial density for cattle is 373÷0.6 = ca. 622 kg per m³.
- According to Table 4.2, whereby 1,000 sheep weigh 31.8 tons or 31,800 kg, one head of sheep weighs 31.8 kg. If one head of sheep typically occupies 0.04 to 0.05 m³, then the typical burial density for sheep is 31.8÷0.05 = ca. 636 kg per m³ to 31.8÷0.04 = ca. 795 kg per m³.
- According to Table 4.2, whereby 1,000 pigs weigh 27.6 tons or 27,600 kg, one pig weighs 27.6 kg. If one pig typically occupies 0.04 to 0.05 m³, then the typical burial density for pigs is 27.6÷0.05 = ca. 552 kg per m³ to 27.6÷0.04 = ca. 690 kg per m³.

So much for Jansson’s claim that my calculation whereby 663.40 kg of human mass can fit into one cubic meter is "a truly enormous error".

To be sure, Table 4.2 points to the lower burial densities that Jansson makes so much of. However, it becomes apparent from Jansson’s source why the assumed density, calculated above after the data in that same source, is not considered achievable in practice: the carcasses are "placed randomly in the pit, with a packing factor of 1.4". This random placing obviously leads to unused space between the carcasses, which could be avoided if there was a packing team inside the pit arranging the carcasses in a space-saving manner and squeezing them together as tightly as possible – the way the corpses of murdered deportees were arranged and squeezed together in the AR camps’ mass graves.

Thus it’s quite understandable that Jansson not only failed to provide the link to his source in his aforementioned blog, but now vehemently refuses (with his "I actually read the report" – affectation of superiority) to provide further information from the report.

Not that it matters, but where did I write anything about the capping layer being thicker than reported, by the way? Exactly nowhere, I dare say. On top of again omitting information from a source of his that is inconvenient to his argument, Jansson also creatively misinterpreted one of my arguments once again.

Meanwhile, my Dresden Altmarkt question:

So please tell me, Mr. Jansson, how much gasoline do you think they used to cremate 6,865 corpses (or 10 times that many, if you choose to fall for the doctored version of TB 47) on the Dresden Altmarkt after the bombing of 13/14 February 1945?

Do you accept my calculation whereby it was about 68,000 liters (more than twice the daily consumption of a Panzer division, at a time when Nazi Germany was fighting for survival and its armed forces were running woefully short of fuel)?

Do you think 68,000 liters is too high, as one might think Mattogno does?

Or do you think the amount was twice or three times or four times as high (implying a Panzer division immobilized for lack of fuel not two but four, six or eight days)?

Read: on yet another of Jansson’s puerile and ill-reflected "lie" accusations. Yawn …

Jansson:

On the entirely marginal issue …

So Jansson rabidly filled much blogspace (and presumably bored the hell out of even his gullible and patient "Revisionist" audience) about what he considers an entirely marginal issue? That’s good to know.

… in support of his silly theory that I was unable to find one of his sources, couldn’t figure out his reasoning, but somehow by sheer luck and bizarre rounding practices happened to obtain information from his source nevertheless – already discussed here and here – Muehlenkamp is reduced to asking why I didn’t mention where I got the range 15-18.8.

"Reduced", the fellow brags. Rather pathetically, as I had already asked that question in the previous update (before considering the possibility that my hunch was mistaken, and stating what this would imply), and Jansson ignored the question until I repeated it.

Jansson:

That’s simple: first, because I was concisely summarising an opponents’ argument before proceeding to my own, and consequently placed a premium on brevity and efficiency (things which Muehlenkamp is incapable of attaining), and second, because it was obvious – anyone who was interested enough to look into the matter could figure it out quite easily.

Rather unconvincing blather, also considering that Jansson brings it up only now. And what is more, Jansson for the second time omits my having considered the possibility that my hunch was mistaken, even before he started rambling against it:

If my hunch should be mistaken and Jansson should (despite the above-mentioned indication to the contrary) actually have seen this page prior to his initial post, this would mean that he created an unnecessary misunderstanding by producing this bluster:

Muehlenkamp refers to a website (though he fails to give the url) for a claim that underweight individuals have a BMI between 15 and 18.8. Based on this, he gives the figures of 38 and 48 kg (corresponding to BMIs of 14.84 and 18.75 at a height of 1.60 meters), and takes their mean, 43 kg. This corresponds to a BMI of 16.8. Note that these numbers are pure inventions on Muehlenkamp’s part, and rest on no data whatsoever.

without mentioning where he had got the "BMI between 15 and 18.8" from.

On top if yet another puerile "lie" accusation (which is amusingly rabid, as the fellow hollers that "in addition to being an illiterate moron", I am also "an arrant liar") and another demonstrable lie of his own (besides the ones pointed out here and here), this would look bad enough on Jansson.

Jansson:

Muehlenkamp now says that he was ignorant of this matter himself; I will take him at his word, but in light of the close connection between the pages on the website in question this is like citing an appendix to a book but claiming that you are unaware of the chapter which that very appendix supplemented.